


Don't Let It Be the Last Time

by tenscupcake



Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M, RPF
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-02-19 15:30:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2393534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenscupcake/pseuds/tenscupcake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a first time for everything... but does there have to be a last? David reflects on certain milestones in his relationship with Billie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Let It Be the Last Time

**Author's Note:**

> I've been playing with this idea for a few months now and finally started writing it down. I originally intended for it to be a lengthy one-shot, but I thought it might work better as a short series. Hope you enjoy it! Teen, for now. :)

The first time they kiss, they’re in character. In front of dozens of people who are basically strangers to him. In costume.

They’re on set, after all.

From the day they receive the script he’s fantasizing about it, a bit embarrassed he that he’s not only willing but eager to learn the taste of his very new costar’s lips. The vague description of the kiss is clear in only one regard: the Doctor is taken by surprise. From an acting perspective, it means the technique, the build-up, the intensity – they’re taken out of his hands and placed in Billie’s, and he spends the better part of his nights dreaming of what her plans for it might be. Whether she’s thinking about it, too.

Being a professional, he never mentions these thoughts to her, never requests a practice run, writing it off as inappropriate to even ask. Doesn’t want to push his luck with a fledgling friendship when they’re getting on so spectacularly. This tactic, though, leaves him entirely unprepared when the day finally arrives.

He’s been distracted all bloody morning, accidentally glancing down at the smooth expanse of skin between the several open buttons on her shirt too many times. Losing track of his next line more times than he can count, lost in thoughts of her lips, full and pink and soft, what they’re going to feel like pressed against his own.

With every scene he’s a little edgier, more frustrated that they aren’t just getting the scene out of the way. He’s short with everyone before the clock even strikes noon, except for Billie, of course: with her he strives to get some semblance of the upper hand with every charm in his mind’s stockpile that’s ever made a woman flustered. But none of them seem to work. She’s calm and confident and professional while his hands are sweating like mad and he can hardly deliver a single line right on the first take.

He hates filming scenes out of order. Surely, any minute now. They can’t push it until after lunch - he’s already spent enough time clearing the taste of breakfast from his mouth with vigorous brushing between scenes. He’s about to ask whether they’ve filmed right through lunch when he glances over at Billie’s mobile: three hours have never passed so slowly.

Finally his fate’s upon him when they get tipped off by someone’s assistant which scene is up next, and he slips three Altoids in his pocket for good measure, stashing them under his tongue to avoid having them caught on film. The mints burn, of course, and he absently wonders whether he accidentally bought a different flavor than usual or if he really needed to pop three, but he just staves off blinking and it dries his eyes out enough to cancel out the effect of their tearing up. They’re in the right room and she says the line he’s been waiting for; he’s staring at her with the Doctor’s grin and definitely not breathing.

Her hands lunge for his head, fingers twisting in his hair and thumbs grazing his temples and pulls him to her with an urgency that almost makes him believe she’s wanted this as long as he has. His eyes drift closed in the surprise, the novelty of the sensations. Her fingernails scratching lines along his scalp that send shivers of pleasure down his spine, tugging on his hair so forcefully it might hurt under normal circumstances but with her it’s nothing short of divine.

There isn’t a problem, per se. He’d be a lunatic to complain about any aspect of kissing this particular costar. Gun to his head, though? It’s a little wet. It’s mostly his fault, he thinks: the too-strong spearmint making his mouth flood with moisture, and his mess meets lips she tastefully licked before her last line. His mouth craves friction, to discover the facets of her lips’ shape and texture by mapping their contours with his own, but he isn’t bold enough to risk brushing his lips along hers, especially not with the unexpected lubrication between them.

It can’t have been a full second yet but suddenly her mouth is gone, his hair abandoned and it’s only when his lips are bereft that he realizes someone’s yelled ‘cut.’ Glancing dumbly between the nearest gaping cast member and Billie, he picks up only two things in his mild state of stupor as the gears clunk into motion in his head again. First, the director’s telling him to ‘keep quiet next time,’ and heat floods into his face as he realizes he must have made a noise deemed inappropriate for a children’s show without realizing it. Second, Billie’s laughing.

“You just drink a bottle of mouthwash, Dave?” Light giggles fill the air with her question, and knowing they’re directed _at_ him this time, rather than with him, doesn’t help the redness in his cheeks still burning beneath his skin.

“No, I just… mints?” Somehow the tin ends up in his right hand like he’s offering some to her, too as he tries to explain himself, shaking the box of metal until the clang of the pieces inside helps to clear his head.

“Surprised you’ve got any left.” It’s the same teasing tone in her voice as always and she smiles at him, teeth and tongue and ‘sorry you just embarrassed yourself,’ and he thinks maybe he hasn’t completely cocked it up.

“And here, I was just trying to be a gentleman.” He steps closer, emboldened by her tacit forgiveness, shutting out the listening crew. “After those eggs we had for breakfast earlier.” Shaking his head, scrambling to gain back some of the ground he’d lost in the last handful of seconds, he makes light of her teasing him.

Still, after his stylist has willed his Billie-tousled mane into calm obedience with spray bottles of water and mousse and gel, he spits the mints in the trash. He straightens the Doctor’s tie, tugs down on his tight, starchy jacket. Steels himself for another assault he’ll never admit he’s looking forward to as he makes his way back to where she stands, resting her weight on one hip, makeup retouched around the lips and is there _another_ button unclasped at her chest? In the stripes he might as well be a zebra, caught in the predatory gaze of a lioness, but he’s sure she won’t catch him by surprise this time. She can’t.

She does.

He’s the closest a bloke can come to meeting her halfway, lips prepared for determined, strong, unmoving lips that will crash into his without tilting or leaning his head to give himself away. His defensive kiss meets one that’s unexpectedly tender, the speed he expects but none of the aggression; soft, pliant lips part easily against his, enveloping his puckered bottom lip between both of hers. The greedy insistence is absent from her hands; it’s more a soft press of fingertips and palms against his face, fingers that slowly tease through his hair, massaging instead of tugging as their mouths meet. Suddenly they’re so far past the stage directions he forgets they’re even filming at all.

She doesn’t loosen her hold so he doesn’t pull back, moves his lips against hers instead, a gentle brush that doesn’t stop and a taste of her tongue that spurs him on. He’s changing the angle, claiming her full bottom lip while cameras and shouts of something he can’t make out are lost in the background. He calls it chivalry, most would call it hormones that bring his hands to land on her waist, the lightest tug bringing them chest to chest, while her fingers still comb through his hair so deliciously it’s all he can do not to moan desperately against her mouth. It’s better than he ever thought it’d be, memorizing the form and fullness and smooth touch of her lips, losing himself in their effortless glide, the way they dance with his, her technique making his knees week, his head spin, it’s almost like…

With a noise that’s too loud in the quiet room she separates their mouths more abruptly than she’d brought them together. As conditioned air hits his face and he’s suddenly _too_ alone in his own body, his lips cold and isolated without hers, he realizes the word that’s been filtering through one ear and out the other: _cut_. He listens vaguely as his racing heart slows, to instructions about avoiding ‘open mouths’ and keeping the kiss ‘something parents would approve of.’

He disguises it, when he runs his thumb and index finger over his lips, as clearing the remnants of moisture clinging to them, righting an unexpected mess, but the reality is he’s in shock, trying to decide if it’s really happened. Lips buzzing with live nerve endings, tingling with warmth beneath the pads of his fingers, her taste lingering on his tongue, and her staring at him with this look, like she knows what she’s done, like she intended it all along, like she doesn’t feel an ounce of remorse.

It’s like she’s taken damn _lessons_ in snogging. And he’d know. Some of his past roles were hardly more than that: stage snogging and shagging lessons.

“What was that about, Piper?” His hands are in his pockets; he raises an eyebrow in question while scanning the immediate vicinity for listening ears.

“What?” Drinking some water out of her glass, shrugging. Innocent as always.

“You knew they weren’t gonna go for that kind of kiss.” It’s a simple statement of fact, one they both knew well before filming and have certainly been reminded of now.

“I dunno, maybe they would.” She ponders, meeting his eyes. “I just wanted to try a less aggressive take. See how more of a slow burn would work in the scene.” She rims the top of her glass with one finger and it’s very, very distracting, holding it directly in front of the dangerously low-cut shirt until he’s struggling to keep his eyes north. “Like, maybe Rose is in there somewhere, influencing the way Cassandra’s going to take advantage of this. Or maybe she wanted it to last.” He doesn’t expect the heartfelt considerations of characterization and the amount of forethought, and it takes him off guard, leaving him wide open.

“I don’t think I liked it, though. It doesn’t suit her. No need to convince the crew, after all.” He tries not to take it personally. “But _I_ was mild enough, Tennant, I think _you_ took it too far.”

He reaches for his own glass on the tablecloth, floundering for a way to make her shoulder some of the blame, to refute the accusation he’d single-handedly made randy teenagers of them both in front of the cast and crew of a decades-old family show. Coming up blank, he takes a slow sip of his drink, arming himself with the only defense that remains.

“I think you liked it.” He’s looking away, too much a coward to see her deny it in her eyes.

“Oh, is that right?” It’s like their usual playful banter, but there’s something more – something around the edges of their words, something that sprang free when that kiss uncoiled some of the invisible tension between them.

“You kissed me back.”

She only hums in response, and to him it sounds like a victory.

It’s back to frantic hands dragging through his hair, pulling recklessly on his roots, more of the desperation from the first take that was lost in the second. They keep it chaste enough, their lips tightly sealed and mostly dry against each other, no attempts from either to tease with friction or dare with tongues. But she’s pressing with such firm determination, like she’s trying to meld their mouths together, at least leave a permanent mold of her lips imprinted on his. It still takes everything he’s got not to sigh, to groan, to simply exhale against her lips with the outrageous pleasure of kissing her.

But then there’s her hips. The first time it can be written off as accidental: too much momentum bringing their bodies together, too much excitement arching her back as she pulls him to her, that make her hips collide with his. Just barely brushing upward along the seam of the Doctor’s trousers, the moment of friction enough to send his eyebrows to the ceiling and make his breath catch in his throat.

But then she does it again. A deliberate rock of her body against his, and it’s like she’s aiming for him, trying to coax something out of him she really, really shouldn’t be in their current situation. And she lingers. Pressing just for a moment, and now he really isn’t sure of her motives, whether it’s to get a rise out of him or excite herself or to give the cameramen a laugh, but they don’t really matter because in his case the ends don’t justify the means regardless. A jolt of pleasure from his groin courses through him, joining with the sensations flowing from her fingernails on his scalp and her lips crushing themselves to his and his head’s swimming.

He’s half-hard in record time before she sways back once more. It leaves his hips chasing after hers helplessly, contorting and snaking in search of another taste of the sweet friction, resigned to another take already from her misbehaving and figuring he may as well get the most out of this one before it’s over. His hand’s reaching out, and they’re on the cusp of something dangerous, of his fingertips digging into her waist and tugging her against him, of grinding purposefully against her in front of dozens of people, when she finishes her charade.

She lets go of his hair and pries their lips apart and steps away from him with quite the dramatic sigh, flipping her hair and playing the part of flushed and satisfied perfectly. He just gapes at her, in shock she’d pull something even worse than open mouths while they were being filmed, for Christ’s sake, but also, he’d never tell her, ridiculously aroused and only preventing a strain in his trousers by vaguely picturing his mother.

No one’s yelled for them to stop. She offers him her next line, low and stuttering and before he knows it Cassandra’s walking away in Rose’s body, as opposed to Billie walking away from a successful number from her secret playbook. He goes with it, somehow remembering his cheesy line (his voice cracks) and letting them finish the take before he confronts her again, silently wondering how he’ll ever manage a fourth.

She says it was all acting. The director says they’re using the most recent take. He’ll never quite understand either.

Or the fact that not a soul on the set talks about what happened, asks either of them about it. He at least makes some sense out of the latter a few weeks later, when he watches the episode and sees the camera hadn’t captured quite where the action occurred. Shooting the rest of the day’s scenes continues like nothing’s happened, at least on the surface. At least, it seems, for everyone except him. His guilt and anxiety project themselves onto the others, taking the form of judgmental glares and hushed whispers that he knows aren’t really there.

But they all know, the same as he does. She’s got a bloke. Someone she goes home to every weekend, someone he’s never met but who he’s sure if he did, he’d be clocking him in the jaw before five minutes had passed because no bloke could possibly be good enough for her, gorgeous and kind and seductive and brilliant as she is. He spends only a handful of spare thoughts wondering why the fuck she’s toying with him like this, given that fact. Something clicks in his brain after only a few hours though, and he realizes it’s probably just part of who she is: playful, even casual flirting, strictly professional kissing, and friendly… thrusting. Yeah, that’s it.

Later, they’re both on his couch waiting on the arrival of Chinese delivery (which isn’t terribly unusual thus far), her feet resting in his lap as they laugh their stomachs sore about the boils makeup and a stupid commercial on telly. His nervousness dissipates as the evening goes on and he’s nearly forgotten about it, having spent the latter half of the day reminding himself she isn’t single and that charismatic, tactile, and forward are simply innate qualities of hers. That she’s not deliberately, cruelly tempting him with no intention of following through. Refuses to believe she’s that sort of woman. It’s almost comfortable again, almost like just yesterday, before they were forced to kiss and make everything about their easy, natural friendship complicated in the confines of his infatuated mind.

He questions his judgment, though, when she brings it up again.

“Nice lips you’ve got, by the way.” Her legs lift and bend to curl up to her chest, leaving his thighs divested of the tiny weight and warmth of her small, shoe-less feet in a swift movement. She says it like it’s nothing, like it’s the title of the song playing on the radio or a sunny weather report. He doesn’t turn, instead staring blankly at the flitting pictures on the screen, a life raft he hopes will let him float away from even having this conversation. His fist’s already clenched around the remote, the other hand sweating into the armrest, fear of drowning not yet subsided. Maybe he hallucinated it.

Her foot nudges his leg through his trousers.

“Hmm?” He turns to her, fluttering insects already populating his stomach at the brief, innocent touch.

“Your lips.” She laughs and it’s better than the most beautiful wind chimes he’d ever heard. “Kissing you, it was nice.”

“Oh, ehm… thanks. You too,” he adds, smiling briefly before his eyes dart from hers again, only pretending to watch the images on the telly. The word rolls around in his head, though, loose cargo in a barrel-rolling airplane until its thumping and banging is too loud to ignore. He may as well play along.

“Just nice?” He angles himself towards her as he asks, one leg curling up onto the cushion as he swivels his torso. ‘Nice’ is polite, it’s friendly.

“What do you mean, ‘just nice?’” She laughs again, holding air quotes around his question. Without giving him time to answer, she adds, “they’re lovely.”

She goes on nonchalantly about how she understand why all her friends can’t wait to meet him, how he got the role of one of history’s finest bachelors, but he’s only picking up words here and there. He just stares, alternating between the shining green eyes flecked with gold and the pink lips he’d love nothing more than to press his _lovely_ ones up against, one more time. He lets the word sink in, _lovely_ , the melody of her voice replaying in his ears, its very essence stroking his growing ego, the text imprinting itself in his psyche, joining the small stack where he keeps the few other words he feels describe him well enough.

Surely, surely she can’t tell him that, can’t tell _any_ bloke that, with friendly intentions? Maybe she’s broken it off with that whatshisname, or is planning to. This is textbook flirting and she must know it. He allows the interpretation he so desperately wants to come clear through the haze, and suddenly the anxiety, the ambiguity is gone and a very bold and very impetuous decision pushes itself to the forefront of his mind.

“What?” She catches him staring.

His only answer is to crawl across the couch and kiss her, her face in his hands like she’s the most precious thing in the world, his lips meeting her smile with a passion like it’s the last chance he’ll ever get. Control he longed for earlier is his now: he chooses the tempo of their lips brushing together, his thumbs roll soft circles over her cheeks, his repressed sounds of contentment no longer need to hide. She returns his kiss at first and it’s almost too perfect: the simple, effortless slide of their lips over one another like they’ve been doing it for years, setting a natural, easy rhythm like their mouths were designed to move together, like they weren’t meant for anyone else. But it’s too soon, far too soon, that something in her shifts: there’s hesitance in her energy, tension around his lips, a rigidity in her form as she sits too still in front of him.

He runs his tongue along her bottom lip before he releases them, committing the taste to memory. Their lips part but his mouth lingers over her cheek, breathing her in, the mild perfume of her skin and the sweetness wafting from her hair, preserving the scents to last him an eternity, if need be.

“Dave,” she breathes against his cheek, and it’s a ‘no,’ as clear as day, the four little letters in his nickname spelling out reasons they can’t do this so she doesn’t have to, only one of which he knows for certain. Pulling away is something worse than leaving the comfort of bed and the warmth of a quilt on an early, freezing Monday morning: a smarting loss that aches the instant he loses contact.

“I’ve got – ”

“I know,” he cuts her off, doesn’t want to hear her say it. He can’t look at her when he mumbles an apology and insists he knows they’re only mates, he’s staring at the break in the cushions in the space between them, wishing he could melt and hide inside the tiny crack. To answer his earlier question: yes, Billie Piper can tell blokes they have a lovely mouth with purely friendly intentions. Make note for the future.

She doesn’t leave. Nudges his shoulder, tells him it’s all right, that he can’t scare her off that easily. That it’s easy to get caught up in a moment. They still eat Chinese, one of them fluidly changes the subject whenever the silence stretches for too long, awkwardness subsides with their easy laughter, and Billie certainly doesn’t dwell. She’s quite comfortable pretending it never happened, and he pretends to be.

 


End file.
